Friday, April 20, 2007

Pre-Crime

Ted Bundy, Jefferey Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, BTK killer - some of the names that come to our mind when we think of notorious killers, cannibals and criminals. If you look at BTK and Albert Fish two criminals who had a family, had children, is how normal they were with their family and insanity took over at other times.

In my spare time I visit this website called crimelibrary.com and profile killers, their patterns, their motives and history.
Here is my take on criminals:
1) Every person....EVERYONE...is a potential criminal:
Very rarely is crime committed for amusement. Most of it is circumstantial. Seeing the spouse with the lover, a hungry person on the street coming near an unattended food stall etc.
2) Criminals will attack again:
More like the first time you masturbate. You did it once, you want to do it over and over again. This is of course if you don't get caught doing it the first time.
3) A criminals' origin is random:
You cannot predict who is a criminal. The woman standing in the kid's section might be your soccer mom, or a slasher woman who kills her lovers in bed. The guy dressed up in CK might be a successful businessman or the next Dahmer in the making.

The short story by Philip K Dick and the movie by the same name - Minority Report deals with Pre-crime, the act of arresting a person as and when he intends to commit a crime.
My belief is that if such a process is possible, a high number of potential criminals will be arrested. A guy who watching a pretty girl undress, a kid yearning for a toy in a shop, a frustrated programmer at work, some guy waiting for several hours in rush hour traffic (Michael Douglas in Falling Down)...it could be anyone.

But where does the arresting begin? Where does it end? If Pre-crime were to exist wouldn't the very fact that it exists cause people's mind to spin out of control making them criminals already? Something like the Apple to Eve?

So here is the open question (John Anderton style) -
"Would the presence of Pre-crime cause more 'potential criminals' to sprout thereby leading to more arrests or will it's lack there of cause 'actual criminals' to move about freely committing crimes? What is worse?"

Labels:

1 Comments:

Blogger Amanda said...

You are a strange man---lol

4:20 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home